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This is her home and Beth Dixon refuses to be afraid in her home.
She looks to the clock hanging on the wall next to their back door though and she had just thought that he would have been home by now. It's dark now and this is the first time that she's been alone in this house – at night – without him. But she refuses to be afraid.
"Don't be ridiculous, Beth," she mutters to herself. "There's no one around for miles."
Oh, that's not a good thought to be having right now. No one around for miles to hear her scream if someone decides to kick the front door in right now.
Beth shakes her head at herself and goes to grab the dry – still warm – clothes from the dryer, dumping them into the basket and then, making sure the dryer door closes completely, she leaves the back room, stepping into the kitchen. The back room had once just been a screened in porch where Daryl kept his stacked washing machine and dryer along with his deep freezer where he keeps the meats that he hunts and cleans, but since marrying her, he has enclosed it all.
"You should have a laundry room inside," he had muttered as if embarrassed when he had showed her the finished product and Beth had nearly squealed before throwing her arms around his neck and peppering kisses all over his face.
Sometimes, he sells those meats from the deep freezer to different people in town, people who want fresh meat without any chemicals or antibiotics in them and it's another source of an extra income, but for the most part, he had those meats for himself and with the vegetable patch he grows in the backyard, with the exception of going to work every day at Dale's Auto Garage, Daryl had little reason to go into town.
Since marrying Beth though, that has changed. Saturdays have become their grocery days. Aldi opens each day at nine and by 8:58, they are sitting idly in a parking spot in Daryl's truck, waiting for the store to open. Beth goes over her list, making sure she has everything written down that she and Daryl need.
Daryl didn't have that much cabinet space in his kitchen before, but after marrying Beth and she always "stocking up" as she likes to call it, Daryl has built a tall door cabinet against the wall next to the back door that has plenty of room for all of Beth's cans and boxes of non-perishable food that she insists they need.
"Just in case," she always says when she's buying their twentieth box of pasta or their fiftieth box of rice.
She also always makes sure that there is a gallon of milk in their refrigerator, a carton of orange juice and a dozen eggs as well because before they were married – when she had just been coming up here to spend a few hours or the whole night and no one knew about their relationship yet – the most Daryl had in his refrigerator was a couple of bottles of beer, cans of ginger ale, and a jar of grape jelly.
"I don't want you to get osteoporosis," she tells him.
"Damn girl, how old do you think I am?" Daryl grumbled, but since then, he's always wanting chocolate milk, too, which Beth happily adds to their list every week.
Beth has also dragged him to the nursery in town, wanting to buy two mini evergreens so they could plant them on either side of their front steps and beds of flowers to plant in the front of their house as well and bags of mulch. Daryl has never given a real thought as to landscaping – why should he when he lives in the middle of the woods like he does? – but he married Beth and Beth has them spend a weekend, pulling weeds, planting flowers and lying down fresh mulch, making their little home much more welcoming looking.
"Why the hell do I want it to look welcoming?" Daryl frowned when she told him. "There's a reason I live all the way up here and that's so people leave me the hell alone."
But he dug the holes for the trees and lugged the mulch bags from the truck bed without further complaint.
They've painted the rooms inside and have hung curtains and Daryl let Beth choose the color to paint their front door and every time she comes home and sees their bright yellow front door, it makes her smile.
This is her home and being here, in her home – alone and at night – she is not going to be afraid.
Beth carries the basket into hers and Daryl's bedroom and sets it down on the bed. It has been overcast all day and now, with the sun gone and it completely dark outside, the wind has begun picking up as well and Beth can hear the branches of the trees that surround the house scraping across the roof and the siding.
"Just the wind, Beth," she tells herself. "It's not some crazy escaped mental patient with a hook for a hand."
Beth sighs impatiently with herself. What is with her having these kinds of thoughts?
She can't help, but go to the two windows in the bedroom that overlook the front and side of the house and pulls the blinds shut so if there is someone out there besides Daryl, they can't stand there and watch her.
She's very aware of the fact that she's being completely ridiculous and knowing she's being ridiculous and able to admit it is just as important.
She goes to her IPod dock on the dresser and selects one of her playlists and she is sure that she sings along to every song out loud as she folds hers and Daryl's laundry and puts it away in the dresser drawers or hangs them in the closet. It's good to have noise in the house. She feels like she's not completely alone as she belts out songs along with Lorde. This way, she can't hear the wind or the scraping of branches and she does her best to not think about being here alone.
She's in her home and Daryl has done everything to make her feel comfortable and at home being here. Anything she has even suggested – or hadn't for that matter – Daryl has seen to.
Beth has obviously never been married before, but having Daryl for a husband, he's exactly the kind of man she has dreamt about ever since she was a little girl and planned her adult life all out. They might not have a lot of money. They might eat generic food brands and buy their furniture, and some of their clothes, second hand, but they completely love one another and Daryl treats her as well as a man can possibly treat a woman. Beth knows that if he walks in through the door right now and she asks him to never leave her here along at night again, he will agree and be sure to always be home before the sun sets.
But Beth won't ask him that. She's a grown woman. She's a wife and an adult and this is her home.
She's not going to ever tell Daryl that she's afraid of the wind.
After finishing up putting away the last of the laundry, Beth turns her IPod off, immediately cloaked in the quietness once again, and returns the laundry basket to where they keep it in the bathroom – and tries to decide what to do next. She can play the piano or watch television. Both would provide plenty of noise and hopefully distract her from being alone. She wishes she understood what on earth is the matter with her. It's not like she's never been alone at home before. Her daddy's farm is just as isolated as Daryl's house.
Her house.
The only difference is the farm is surrounded by open land and this house is in the middle of the woods, with miles and miles of trees and no one else around except, for right now, just her and a possible Jason Voorhees.
Beth exhales a deep breath and shakes her hands out.
She knows she's probably overdoing it, but she can't seem to stop nor help herself. Beth tells herself that she'll get better. Of course, she will. This is her first night here, alone. There will be other nights where Daryl will be out hunting late, or maybe out, hanging out with his brother, and she'll be here, home alone. And when that happens again, Beth will be just fine. This is just a little hump she has to get over first.
She turns on the television, making sure it's not showing anything within the horror or true crime genre. She flips through the channels, going right past Criminal Minds, and stops on an old episode Fixer Upper on HGTV. She then goes to the record player that Daryl had bought for her just the week before – a wedding present, he had mumbled with pink ears – and Beth now puts on Fleetwood Mac's Rumours, going right to "Gold Dust Woman", her favorite, and immediately begins mouthing the lyrics along with Stevie Nicks.
It's a lot of noise in the small house, but she certainly doesn't care. That's kind of the whole point.
She then pauses at the piano, another wedding present from Daryl, against the shared wall of the kitchen and living room and for a moment, in addition to the record and television, Beth considers playing this as well, but she shakes her head at herself. That might be a little too much noise.
If there is some psycho killer stalking the woods right now, Beth doesn't want to make it too obvious that she is home alone right now and just a tad bit unsettled.
She'll bake instead. She'll bake cookies or even a cake.
Daryl has said, more than once, that she's going to make him fat with all of her baking and Beth just smiles and kisses him on the lips when he says that while dancing her fingers across his stomach, smiling widely when she gets him to actually let out a laugh.
They had eaten a large lunch right before Daryl had gone off on his hunting excursion because he hadn't known when he would be home and he had told her that he didn't want her to waste time, fixing dinner for the both of them since he didn't know. Beth had eaten a peanut butter and jelly sandwich an hour ago – when it had still been a bit light out and her irrational fears hadn't completely set in yet.
She won't make Daryl dinner, but she'll make him something sweet.
Mind made up, and with the music and television still on, Beth hums to herself as she goes into the kitchen and begins gather everything she will need. Her mother, Annette, had gifted her with a yellow Kitchen Aid mixer once she had married Daryl and moved officially into this house with him. A wedding gift, Annette had said.
So many wedding presents, Beth thinks to herself.
Going to the cabinet Daryl has built for her, she grabs her brown sugar, her containers of sugar and flour, and bag of chocolate chips along with the few other ingredients she needs and turns, placing them all down on the counter near her mixer.
This is going to help. With the noise from the record player and the television and now the distraction of preheating the oven and measuring and mixing the ingredients out, she is no longer wondering when Daryl will come home. He will come home tonight. She knows that sometimes, he spends the night out in the woods, but Beth can't imagine him doing that tonight; not when she's here, alone, frightened despite the distracting noises pounding in her ears.
If Daryl doesn't come home tonight, Beth already knows she won't be able to sleep for even a minute.
She can't imagine Daryl leaving her alone like that though. She just can't. Even after they'll be married for thirty years and he is going to be out, hunting all night, he'll tell her beforehand so she's not sitting there, trying to ignore the wind outside and the branches scratching against the house and praying that's alright and haven't fallen somewhere out there and hurt himself.
The oven beeps, preheated to the desired temperature, and Beth finishes mixing the cookie dough, ready to be formed into individual balls. She can hear that a new episode of Fixer Upper is beginning and she needs to turn the record over back to the 'A' side and all of these things are things that can distract her for a few minutes more and she purses her lips together as an ache begins to form in her chest when she thinks that Daryl still isn't home.
"Stop it," she scolds herself in a quiet voice. "You're a married, grown woman and you are home and you are not going to be afraid. You will not let Daryl know that you're afraid."
When they had first begun seeing one another, Beth had always gone through the utmost care to not draw attention to their age difference. There aren't nearly as many years between herself and Daryl that are between her own mom and dad, but still, she knew sometimes, it was – and still is – something that had made Daryl uncomfortable and her being afraid to be alone at home at night will definitely shine a spotlight onto how young his wife is and Beth wants Daryl to know that he's married a woman.
Not some little girl who wants to go home to her parents' house.
She can't help it. She lets out a shriek when she hears heavy steps on the back wooden steps. Even over the television and the whirring of the still mixing mixer, she can hear the steps and then the back door opens. She freezes, hearing the steps hurry through the back laundry room and she realizes – too late – that the door isn't locked.
What if it's not Daryl? What if a man has just entered her home and she stupidly didn't lock the door earlier when she had brought the laundry in?
Before she can even reach her hand out towards the door, it swings open and she shrieks again.
"Beth?"
"Daryl!" Beth exclaims, unable to help herself, and she rushes to him, jumping up and Daryl has just enough time to set his crossbow down on the table – she knows she'll lecture him for that later if she feels like it – before he catches her in his arms.
"I've haven' been gone that long, have I?" Daryl wonders out loud as Beth presses kisses everywhere on his face that her lips can reach.
She just laughs though. "Hours."
She pulls her head back to smile at him – now that he's home again, she can't stop smiling – and Daryl looks at her with those quiet, intent eyes of his and he lifts one hand, holding her with just one arm, and he brushes hair back from her face.
"'m sorry," he says even as Beth shakes her head. "I didn't mean to be gone that long. I was huntin' a doe and lost track of time. You okay?" He then asks.
Beth looks at him for a moment and she again, imagines them in thirty more years of marriage. She imagines that she'll leap into his arms even then. She hopes she will.
She nods then and gives him a smile, lifting her own hands to his face to brush his hair from his face.
"I just missed you."
Daryl waits a moment and she hopes that he believes her because she has missed him. And if there's anything else behind her greeting to him, it's her decision to keep it a secret to herself.
But then he smiles a little and both of his arms are holding her up again and he doesn't seem ready to let her down anytime soon; not that that is something Beth would even think of complaining about.
"I missed you, too, girl. Good to be home," he says and Beth is still smiling as she leans in and kisses her lips to his.
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